Category: Games

Pokemon Go is only officially out in Australia, New Zealand and the US

At the moment, Pokemon Go is only available officially in Australia, New Zealand, and the US, unless of course you plan to sideload it on Android or have an iTunes account for the aforementioned regions. This might change.

According to The Wall Street Journal, you can expect it in your country soon. It claims that “people familiar with plans for the game said it would likely be available in other regions, including Europe, Japan, and other Asian nations within a few days.”

This bodes well for an official Indian release. Even more so when you consider that previous Nintendo efforts such as Miitomo have ignored the country altogether.

The news comes days after developer Niantic had to pause Pokemon Go’s global rollout due to server overcapacity.

The impact of players in other countries sideloading the game, in addition to those in countries where Pokemon Go is available, is that the game has been uplayable for a vast number of people due to its servers unable to deal with the load. So much so that developer Niantic who made Pokemon Go along with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company is delaying its release in other markets till this is fixed.

“We thought the game would be popular, but it obviously struck a nerve,” Niantic CEO John Hanke said to Business Insider, stating that the launch in other countries has been “paused until we’re comfortable”. Despite the rabid interest the franchise has generated over the years, something Niantic is aware of, it has been caught by surprise.

Are you playing Pokemon Go? What are your thoughts on it so far? Let us know in the comments.

While Pokemon Go might just be available in three countries for now, that hasn’t stopped fans the world over from obtaining the game for Android via sideloading or iOS by creating and using an iTunes account for Australia, New Zealand, or the US. It seems that those playing Pokemon Go have been subject to a glaring security violation. The game has full access to your Google account. Well, at least on iOS.

This was discovered by Adam Reeve, Principal Architect at RedOwl Analytics. He took to Tumblr to share his findings:

And this isn’t all. According to Reeve, since the game uses email as an authentication mechanism, he believes there’s “a pretty good chance of gaining access to your accounts on other sites too.”

There is no need for this either. Usually when a developer allows users to sign in via Google, the level of access is specified. More often than not this is simply contact information.

Reeves later tweeted that “it seems to affect some iOS users, not all. No idea what the criteria are yet.”

We’ve checked this with the Google account used on our iPhone 5S and yes, Pokemon Go did grant itself complete access to our account. This was not the case with our Android build of the game, although at the time of posting this, just one user has reported that it does impact the Android version as well. Reeves believes that on “Android it’s using client permissions to get data, whilst on iOS it’s using the Google account.”

Nonetheless, if you’re not keen on letting Niantic have complete access to your account, deleting the game isn’t enough. Here’s what you need to do to fix this:

Log in to your Google account.

View the app permissions available here.

Revoke access to the game by clicking it.

Right now, Niantic and The Pokemon Company have maintained silence on this. Keep in mind that if you ever decide to risk playing Pokemon Go again, you’ll need to grant it access to a Google account. The game does have an option to let you sign in using a Pokemon.com account but since the game’s launch the sign up section of the site has been unavailable. Hopefully this corrects itself in days to come what with Niantic and The Pokemon Company planning a global launch for the game soon enough.

Update, July 12, 2016: Niantic has issued the following statement:

“We recently discovered that the Pokémon GO account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon GO only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected.

Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon GO or Niantic. Google will soon reduce Pokémon GO’s permission to only the basic profile data that Pokémon GO needs, and users do not need to take any actions themselves.”

Niantic’s unbelievably popular Pokemon Go app came under the scanner after Principal Architect at RedOwl Analytics, Adam Reeve found out that the game was granting itself full access to the user’s Google account. When users sign into the iOS app via Google, the app takes full access to their Google accounts. This understandably caused furore, and Niantic has now issued a statement acknowledging the error.

The company says that it is aware of the error, and is looking to work out a fix soon. “We recently discovered that the Pokémon Go account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon Go only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected.”

“Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access. Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon Go or Niantic. Google will soon reduce Pokémon Go’s permission to only the basic profile data that Pokémon Go needs, and users do not need to take any actions themselves,” the company wrote on its support page.

This comes as a relief, as the game has picked up much fan following in a short period of time. There is no timeline from the makers as to when the fix will roll out, so if you’re antsy about personal information, it’s best to revoke full access till Google or Niantic reduces permission. To do that, just sign into Google, and head over to App Permissions to remove access to Pokemon Go.

The game has been launched officially only in Australia, New Zealand, and the US countries so far, but has been illegitimately installed the world over. If you have been reading Gadgets 360, you already know how to download, install, and play Pokemon Go even if you don’t live in those regions.